Yiping Qian

Research project

Title: Chinese Porcelain, Building Environments and the Construction of Symbolic Meaning in Medieval Swahili Material Culture

Supervisors: Prof. Stephanie Wynne-Jones

Funding: East China Normal University Graduate Students' Study Abroad Visit Grants (Category C)

Abstract: From the ninth century onwards, Chinese porcelain circulated to East Africa through the Indian Ocean trade network, followed by a culture borrowing phenomena in the Swahili coast that combined Chinese material culture with Arab religious culture. Those porcelain were used to link the past with the present, the local with the overseas, and as part of the 'grand tradition' of the elite aristocracy, displaying a cross-cultural characteristic that reflected pre-modern Afro-Asian connections. The changing use of ancient Chinese porcelain in East Africa is linked to the traders, religious heretics and political refugees from Persia and Arabia, and the change of migrant groups has led to a period change in porcelain decoration. Meanwhile, Swahili people take the African initiative develop a lifestyle and symbolic system linking coral stone buildings, cities and civilizations.  Explaining the development of Swahili civilization has also led to a debate between exogenous and indigenous origins with the help of ancient Chinese porcelain, and an interdisciplinary perspective can provide a more comprehensive understanding of this period of East African history.